What Being a Stripper Taught Me About Women

Most of 'em want to be on the stage, and I can't blame them.

I typed “female customers giving lap dances at the strip club” into the AI bot and it generated this masterpiece of the macabre.

Let me just start this shit off with a few disclaimers.

1. I do not endorse sex work as a route to “empowerment.” Frankly I don’t even know what “empowerment” means. I discuss my ambivalence here.

2. I cannot possibly speak to the desires of all women in this essay—or ever. So if it doesn’t apply, it doesn’t apply.

3. I worked in strip clubs from the time I was eighteen until the time I was a PhD-holding university instructor, wife, and mother at the age of thirty-five. What I describe in the essay below are simply my observations.

Yo, every stripper knows it: by ‘bout midnight, the female customers are trying to give lap dances, not receive them.

While the strippers enthrall the male customers with their naked sexuality, the female patrons tend to find their thrill not in the consumption—but rather, the imagined enactment—of sexual desirability.

Now, straight away you’re probably going to blame the patriarchy for this dynamic—and yeah, for sure, the patriarchy—but—

Don’t something about this desire feel a little bit…primal to you?

I am no expert on evolutionary psychology…

But I do think the right answer is usually the simplest one.

The desire to be desired is one with which I am familiar. I lived that shit (and I write all about it in my memoir, Too Pretty To Be Good.)

I have the typical stripper story of old: troubled and abused youth with daddy issues wields sexuality as a weapon by which to issue the world a fuck you, and also, win at the game. What a reversal I would pull upon mine enemies!

Yes, I had these wounds and these demographics leading me ever towards my fate.

But also, I had—

A portrait of a goddess, drawn by a child in the dark.

In my memoir, (excerpted here on the ‘stack), I write,

When I was young, I drew self-portraits by the moonlight of my bedroom window, scribbling in crayon a woman on a pedestal with a painted face and a crooked smile, all curves and mystery. Me When I Grow Up, I would title these pieces, a prophecy scrawled in Blue Cyan. When my mother found my drawings, she worried that I had become enamored with whores. Little did she know, it was her, us, our foremothers I was drawing. 

A troubled youth, they’ll say, daddy issues—these are the citations people will give when explaining why a girl turns into a woman like me. I am guilty of all of these and more. Yet stronger than these streams leading ever toward my fate, there is one reason that never makes the list: a portrait of a goddess, drawn by a child in the dark.  

I became a stripper not only because there was no other way out.

There were other—less attractive—ways.

I became a stripper because it was a extreme manifestation, a distilled representation, of a fantasy I think I share with a lot of women:

Wield this powerful sexuality for my personal gain. While wearing sequins.

Be beautiful. Adored. Exciting. Glamourous. A self-sufficient individual, a hustler, a boss. Entrancing to the point of making men lose their minds. Women, too. I think I wanted to make the women lose their minds more than the men.

Because the women: understood the levels of skill I accomplished on these stages, winning these eyes, these dollars flying, these bruises on my knees. Men were blind to the artifice, because they never themselves practiced it. We women, however, have been casting spells all the days of our lives, either explicitly or implicitly. Casting spells with our open arms, our yesses, our interest in everything you have to say—it’s just marvellous! We make a home with our bodies and our hearts for the homeless and the roving, the needy and the doesn’t-know-he’s-needy-but-is-very-very-needy;

you will cite the patriarchy, and I will agree.

But also:

We’re animals.

We’re apes, brah.

We’re not that fuckin’ far off from the goddamn bonobos (who apparently love to hump other female bonobos).

Women make the homes and we are the homes, the bodies that house other bodies, the portal of souls.

And we—would like to make our bodies home for ourselves, as well.

Our sexuality is powerful.

And we’d like a piece of the action.

That’s why, as the night deepens in the Pink Pony, or the Cheetah, or the Paper Moon, or any number of these titty bars where I’ve made my home over these many Southern nights—

Normal-ass women take another shot—

And try to crawl on the stage.

They get up from their seats. They dance sexy stage side (STRICTLY FORBIDDEN). They straddle their boyfriends (ALSO STRICTLY FORBIDDEN). They try to crawl on the bar to twerk (DEAR GOD SOMEONE GET THE BOUNCER).

Strippers—hate that shit. We got enough competition among ourselves.

But it does—kinda tell ya something, don’t it?

Before I sugarcoat this dynamic of female sexual spectacle, another disclaimer:

The strip club is a dangerous muhfuggin world.

Sex work is dangerous. Dudes can and occasionally do get violent. Dudes often feel some level of entitlement to women’s attention and bodies—sorry to say. I’ve lived it. These are merely my observations.

I struggled for years with the push-pull of my love and revulsion, my success and the cost, while I was out there hoeing.

As I navigated my way through the landmines of the club floor, many times I wished there was a place, a space in which I could exercise this art form, without the fear that some dude was gonna assault me, or the world was going to hate me.

Because at the end of the day, women want to feel this feeling.

Not all women, but a whole lot of ‘em—want to feel this feeling.

They want to feel like sex goddesses, like they’re dripping in magic, like fuckin’ spell-casters.

If you’ve ever danced seductively in the mirror when no one was watching, then you already know.

I don’t make the rules, homie. I just observe ‘em.

Women want to feel sexy. They want a fuckin’ stage. They want admiration.

And they want it on their terms—

Without being assaulted or thrown in the trash.

I entered “Shaina Twain Man I Feel Like A Woman” into the AI bot and this mythological siren appeared.

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This common fantasy is why I created my sensual movement brand Stripcraft—now ten years strong! My online academy, School of Stripcraft, opens for enrollment this Wednesday, January 3—but if you click here now, you can jump the line.

Do you ever dance sexy in the mirror? I FUCKIN DARE YA TO COMMENT.

L.B., 2024